Explanation:

- Here’s the thing: the phrase “The first historical act is, the production of material life” comes straight from Marx and Engels. They argued that real history starts with people making and reproducing the basics—food, shelter, you name it.

- Marx (option 1) believed that material conditions, how people produce and sustain life, shape society. In short: we make things, and that shapes how we live together.

- Weber (option 2) focused more on ideas, religion, rationalization—think “Protestant Ethic,” not crops and factories.

- Durkheim (option 3) zoomed in on social facts, collective consciousness, and how society holds together—not on bread and butter foundations.

- Merton (option 4) talked about functions and anomie. He built on Durkheim but stayed away from materialist origins.

- So, the correct answer is Marx. He put the “material life first, ideas second” thing on the map. The others went in different directions.